Karnataka Housing Board’s National Games Village (NGV) is in a mess for almost 10 years now. KHB has not taken any step towards maintenance. NGV has rubbles, and garbage dump all around it. However, no cleaning has been taken up by the KHB despite collecting an external maintenance of Rs. 450 per house.

The National games village has 14 blocks and over 2500 houses. The maintenance has been handed over to the residents, making them responsible for internal maintenance. External maintenance however still remains with KHB.

A maintenance of Rs. 1500 is collected by every block of NGV out of which, Rs. 450 is for the KHB for external maintenance. The remaining amount is used for the purpose of internal maintenance like painting individual blocks, door-to-door garbage collection and internal repairs by every block.

The external maintenance includes water supply, garbage collection, cleaning the surroundings and maintaining the public toilets on the NGV grounds. However no work has been taken up in a while.

Rubble and dogs menace at NGV. Pic: Anisha Nair

The backside of the NGV has gradually become a garbage dump yard. This is resulting in bad odour and mosquitoes. This scattered garbage dump has attracted a lot of street dogs, which has become yet another menace in NGV.

Col. Mario DSouza, resident of Nethravati block of NGV, says, "There are a lot of good facilities here like the club and playground for children. But the under-maintained condition of this society has made it difficult to stay here. The school gate, garbage dump and a lot of other mess around is intolerable."

KHB however claims the maintenance fee collected is insufficient. Arunkumar N C, Assistant Executive engineer, KHB says, "The maintenance cost of Rs. 450 that we collect from every house is insufficient. The entire amount goes into water supply and we don’t have money for any other external maintenance."

Residents however complain that the water supply is not enough. Col. Rajeev Sharma, a resident of NGV says, "There is no proper water supply here. And any construction work at any place leaves back a lot of rubble which is never cleaned after that."

Col. Mario adds, "each apartment has done some or the other kind of internal encroachments. Also a lot of illegal shops have come up on the NGV roads and outside almost every apartment. This is creating a lot of nuisance and more such encroachments are coming up one after the other."

KHB refuses to take up the responsibility for clearing encroachments. Arunkumar says, "since we have handed over the society to the residents, we are not responsible for the internal encroachments of any kind." He further added about the shops saying, "we have recently got one complaint about one shop there. We will take action on it. But otherwise, we cannot take action until we receive complaints against such shops."

In addition, the National Public School next to NGV has constructed one entrance to the school through the NGV, causing heavy traffic jams in the mornings and afternoons. The vehicles coming to drop the children to school use NGV roads for parking and the residents face problems while entering and exiting NGV during these times.
 
KHB has not initiated any action about this either. But when when Citizen Matters asked Arunkumar, he was quick to say, "we will close down the school gate opening in the NGV grounds soon and this problem will be solved." ⊕